


Society

by itsmoonpeaches



Series: Legacy [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: 100 Year War (Avatar TV), Air Nomad Genocide (Avatar), Air Nomads (Avatar), Airbending & Airbenders, Earth Kingdom (Avatar), Everything Changed When The Fire Nation Attacked, Fire Nation (Avatar), Friendship, Gen, Minor Canonical Character(s), Minor Character Death, Minor Injuries, Minor Original Character(s), Minor Violence, Omashu (Avatar), Order of the White Lotus, Pai Sho, Pre-100 Year War (Avatar TV), Pre-Avatar: The Last Airbender, Pre-Canon, Surviving Air Nomads (Avatar), War, Water Tribe(s) (Avatar), Xenophobia, there are some OCs but this is not an OC fic, this is a canon character fic but of characters that are minor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:02:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25887787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsmoonpeaches/pseuds/itsmoonpeaches
Summary: Aang leapt off the bison with his usual enthusiasm and greeted Kuzon with a grin. “I’m so excited! I can’t believe we’re going to a dance festival!” he said while rocking on his heels. “The Fire Nation has so many awesome things! There’s always something different to look forward to!”“Yes, thank you for inviting us, Kuzon,” said Gyatso, stroking one of the ends of his graying mustache. “I don’t think I have been to anything like this in the Fire Nation in many years.”Kuzon bowed, putting his hands together. “It is good to see you again, Monk Gyatso,” he remarked with respect.Gyatso chuckled good-naturedly, placing his hand on Kuzon’s shoulder. “Come now, you know me better than that!”-Or, the story of Kuzon and how he leaves the Fire Nation after the Air Nomad Genocide in search of Aang, Bumi, and the justice for the innocent lives that were lost.
Relationships: Aang & Bumi (Avatar), Aang & Gyatso, Aang & Kuzon (Avatar), Bumi & Kuzon (Avatar), Kuzon & Gyatso, Kuzon & Jeong Jeong, Kuzon & Pakku (Avatar)
Series: Legacy [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1879324
Comments: 63
Kudos: 146





	1. Defection

**Author's Note:**

> This came to me in a random burst of inspiration, partly after hinting that Iroh was recruited into the White Lotus by Pakku in a fic I wrote called The Lights That Guide You, and partly because I wanted to explore the Avatar world in a way that it is rarely explored in, and of course...because I needed to write out my feelings after I found out that the creators left the Netflix adaptation series, but I digress.
> 
> The following chapter might have some disturbing imagery towards the end in terms of minor violence. Unfortunately, with a topic such as a genocide, that cannot be avoided completely. There is also a bit of hinted xenophobia in here, and a particular scene in which a character expresses anti-queer sentiment. I am using canon as basis for much of this, as well as some real-life historical aspects. I am not xenophobic myself (or I try not to be), and I try to be an ally to the LGBTQ+ community in real life. If you are triggered in any way (even with hints of these topics), I am warning you here now.

Kuzon was never a great firebender. In fact, it was well-known that he was mediocre. It never bothered him, even when he had a father who was a general. General Sung, to be precise. His older sister was already known as Lieutenant Anzu at the young age of twenty-three. Though there was a ten-year age difference between them, and they were not particularly close because of it, he did look up to her. She was a skilled firebender unlike Kuzon and was entrusted with the management of the Royal Family’s personal guard. Neither of his family members put much pressure on him for his lack of talent, and in fact they encouraged his fascination in advancing his knowledge of history and other scholarly pursuits.

“You will be a fantastic advisor to the Fire Lord someday, Kuzon,” his father had told him time and again. “You have inherited your mother’s knack for unearthing patterns and secrets.”

“Yeah, little brother,” Anzu had laughed, “You’ll surpass me and dad someday.” 

While they were currently living in peacetime, the Fire Nation kept up its military. According to Fire Lord Sozin, it was important to keep their nation prepared for any adversaries, especially since the world was still awaiting the reveal of the new Avatar after Roku.

It was proclaimed throughout the nation that Fire Lord Sozin was devastated for the loss of his oldest friend. It was no secret that the two had grown up together, with Roku being from a branch of a prominent family. It was a tragedy that twelve years before, Roku had perished in the ashes of a volcanic explosion while trying to save his home from destruction. The Fire Nation had mourned for their lost Avatar, but it was time for the cycle to begin anew.

According to the legends that Kuzon was told, the next nation that the Avatar would be reincarnated in was that of the Air Nomads’. There were whispers that some of the elders in the Air Temples already knew who the Avatar was, and other murmurings that they were still searching. The spiritual ways of his best friend’s people were a mystery to much of the world, but all that mystical nonsense was not enough to deter Kuzon from being excited to see Aang.

Kuzon was a year older than him, and they had met when Aang was seven and Kuzon was eight. According to Aang, seven was the age in which the monks started to expose the children in the temples to the world. They _were_ nomads after all. Aang had come to the Fire Nation on the back of a flying bison, with a younger bison named Appa flying beside it. His guardian, Gyatso, steered them to land in the middle of the capital city that sat inside the caldera on the main island.

Kuzon and Aang had met by happenstance, because Kuzon had witnessed them landing and he was utterly mesmerized with the strange creatures they had arrived with. They had been best of friends ever since. They exchanged frequent letters and met each other a few times a year. The two of them had gotten into so much trouble, and one time stole a dragon egg from poachers to return to a full-grown mother dragon.

Aang had even brought him to meet his friend, Prince Bumi once somewhere in the Earth Kingdom city of Omashu. Normally, it would not have been possible for Kuzon to leave the Fire Nation like that, but it was lucky that his father had been on diplomatic business with the king of Omashu. Of course, the three of them had gotten into more trouble after running into the den of a saber-toothed moose-lion and had to sneak back into the city through the sewers. There was nothing like surviving a life-or-death situation to bond over. From then on, the friends kept in touch.

This time when Aang and Gyatso arrived on the courtyard of his family’s compound, it was on just one bison. Appa was now large enough to carry multiple people, and according to Gyatso, the great beast was about his final adult size.

Aang leapt off the bison with his usual enthusiasm and greeted Kuzon with a grin. “I’m so excited! I can’t believe we’re going to a dance festival!” he said while rocking on his heels. “The Fire Nation has so many awesome things! There’s always something different to look forward to!”

Gyatso, while an old monk, was young at heart and he showed it. He was dressed in longer traditional Air Nomad robes than Aang’s. His were lengthy and sweeping, deep orange and yellow. Kuzon always thought that his beaded wooden necklace was the best part of what he wore. The carvings of the three swirls that symbolized the Air Nomads were so well made. He wanted to learn more about it.

“Yes, thank you for inviting us, Kuzon,” said Gyatso, stroking one of the ends of his graying mustache. “I don’t think I have been to anything like this in the Fire Nation in many years.”

Kuzon bowed, putting his hands together. “It is good to see you again, Monk Gyatso,” he remarked with respect.

Gyatso chuckled good-naturedly, placing his hand on Kuzon’s shoulder. “Come now, you know me better than that!”

Almost as soon as he said that Appa collapsed onto his belly and shook the entire courtyard, including the deer scare that wobbled and sputtered a spout of pond water onto a nearby turtle duck. The poor animal squawked and waddled away angrily.

The three of them were lost in a chorus of laughter and mirth, clutching their stomachs, and wiping the tears that appeared at the corners of their eyes. The servants and the branch family members went about their day in the interconnected outdoor hallways, some rolling their eyes at them, and others giggling. Standing hunched over and huddled together with a giant bison in the middle of one of his compound’s many sky wells, it was easy to ignore the others in favor of the happy sunlight that spilled over onto them. 

Even the sweltering heat of the islands could not deter the three of them from the amount of fun they had together from the moment they met. It was always like this when Kuzon saw Aang and Gyatso. When Bumi was involved in the times he could be, it was another adventure all together. Their meetings were full of good memories that followed Kuzon from childhood into his blossoming adolescent years.

Kuzon was more than content now that his friends were there. His father and sister had become busier the past year, and he was eager to get out of the house and enjoy his time with people.

He had seen Aang two months before, just when Aang had acquired a new set of airbending master tattoos. He now matched Gyatso with the blue arrows that lined his arms and legs and pointed down his forehead. In contrast to Kuzon, Aang was a prodigy at his element and was the youngest known master in centuries at only twelve years of age. They had celebrated by watching the fireworks on Ember Island. Though, there might have been a few surprise explosions involved. After that was the dragon egg incident that Kuzon really just wanted to forget…

“Let’s get Appa fed and eat something before we head out!” suggested Kuzon with a smile. “Min Lee says she made fruit tarts for us!”

Aang fell into step beside him, babbling about everything and nothing, while Gyatso followed from behind with an indulgent look on his face. He spoke about teaching the other kids at the Southern Air Temple about the move he created: The Air Scooter. Apparently, that was what had earned him his tattoos. He told him that he had mastered thirty-five of the thirty-six tiers of airbending, but his creation of the Air Scooter afforded him mastery. Gyatso chimed in, pride in every word as he described the moment he had deemed Aang worthy.

They talked more after they ushered Appa into a barn out back where he would be comfortable in the shade. Aang rolled a bushel of hay toward him and Gyatso helped fetch a few pails of water into a trough.

When they returned to the compound, a servant led them to a tearoom, a kind of nook where his father took guests when they arrived during the daytime. They sat on circular velvety red cushions around a round table. A pot of jasmine tea sat in the center, its flowery aroma escaping from underneath the lid. It was a unique teapot that Kuzon quite liked. It was black and dark red, with raised designs of gold that led to a dragon head spout.

Gyatso poured the three of them tea just as Min Lee walked into the room with a tray of the promised fruit tarts.

“Fresh from my kitchen!” exclaimed the woman. She set the silvery tray on the table and joined them for a time.

Min Lee was a member of the branch family that served the main family that Kuzon was part of. They were of noble blood through marriage, but centuries of the dynamic of protectors to the main family and staunch tradition kept their families in a unique status of loyalty to each other. While most of the branch members were nonbenders, there were a few rare exceptions. Because of this, they had mastered the art of chi-blocking as their own fighting style. They were acrobatic, agile, and could fight on equal footing or more with any skilled bender.

Though, if Kuzon was being honest he found their naming system a bit odd. All of them had names that ended in the same character. Sometimes, he confused Min Lee’s name with her older brother, Jin Lee. It was a good thing that they looked so different. Min Lee was tall and slender, a form true to her nature of fighting. She wore her dark hair in a low braid and had piercing brown eyes. The armor she seemed to wear at all times was made of different shades of red and pink, and extremely pliant. It kind of resembled Fire Nation military uniforms, but in a more streamlined manner and with less padding.

“This is great! The lychee was a good touch,” praised Aang from beside Kuzon. He scarfed down another tart and coughed after downing a scalding cup of tea.

“Slow down, Aang, you might choke,” said Gyatso with a shake of his head. “I thought you might have learned after that time I had to save you from eating too many purple berries.”

“I was five!” Aang contended with a pout.

“Are you sure you’re not still five?” teased Kuzon.

There was another bout of laughter. Min Lee grinned and stood up, satisfied that her baking skills were appreciated. She ducked out of the double doors with a quiet nod.

“Think we’re gonna see any of the princes?” asked Aang, tilting his head over to a picture that hung on the wall of the eldest prince in question that was beside one of Fire Lord Sozin. The prince was in his late sixties now, quite old to be next in line to the throne, but Sozin was healthy and a good ruler. No one expected him to abdicate. He did not even have any direct heirs of his own. He kept marrying and remarrying, waiting for a son. No one dared to note that he was getting too old to be a father. Though, Kuzon kept hearing from the court that his newest consort had gotten pregnant and was three months along. 

“No way,” Kuzon responded. “The Royal Family doesn’t come to things like festivals.”

Aang frowned. “That’s a shame,” he said. Then, he squinted at the prince’s painting again. “He’s not wearing the headpiece of the Crown Prince.”

Kuzon lifted a brow. “What headpiece are you talking about? He’s always worn his hair like that.”

Aang’s shoulders slumped, his face contorting in confusion before shaking his head. “Never mind,” he replied. “I must’ve heard a rumor about it that wasn’t true somewhere.”

Kuzon did not miss the strange look that Gyatso gave Aang, but he dismissed it as soon as they started talking about what they were going to do at the festival.

After they were finished eating, Kuzon led the two airbenders outside, away from the upper-class residential areas of the capital, and into the edges of the caldera where the dancing festival had been occurring for the past day.

In the Fire Nation, they were known for celebrations they hosted just to have an excuse to have a party. They were not overly loquacious people, but they liked to have a good time. Dancing and music were all part of the culture. Every season, there was at least one festival. It could have been an ancient spirit to celebrate, a past Avatar to honor, or the birthday of a member of the Royal Family. Now, they celebrated the beginning of spring, and the spirits of nature that brought in the change from winter to the season of new life. What better way to commemorate that than to dance for a few days straight? 

“And this is the Camelephant Strut!” Kuzon cried, excitement defining his every movement. He demonstrated to Aang and Gyatso, shifting his arms from one side of his body to the other in the shape of a camelephant trunk.

The tent where most of the dancing was happening was crowded with people from all over the country. The music added a festive ambiance with the tsungi horns and flutes that the band played. Fried street food was passed from hand to hand, families skittered by on light feet.

There were a handful of Air Nomads present as well. Aang and Gyatso’s people were known for their good humor and free spirits, always finding themselves where there was the most joy. They were also talented musicians and dancers, Kuzon found.

Naturally, both Aang and Gyatso caught on to the steps of every dance Kuzon showed them in minutes. They were graceful and made it look so easy. The children circled around them, asking for their hands and to show them airbending tricks.

Kuzon waved over at Aang. “I’m going to get us some melon juice,” he informed his friend. “Wanna come with?” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder.

“Sure!” answered Aang.

The pair shuffled over to a stand, and Kuzon reached into his pocket for three bronze coins. After he shelled them out, he and Aang watched with fond expressions as Gyatso performed Phoenix Flight with a group of small children. There was an Air Nomad boy, and two other Fire Nation children. A youth dressed in Earth Kingdom attire waited shyly on the sidelines before Gyatso gestured at her to come over.

“I’m really happy we’re friends,” said Aang. He glanced at Kuzon.

Kuzon elbowed Aang with a smirk. “What? Are you getting sentimental on me?” he asked.

Aang laughed. “No, just thinking about how if we never were friends, we never would have been able to do all these fun things together.”

He could not help but smile, warmth blooming from his core. Aang was right, and Kuzon was grateful too. They were friends, the best of friends, and he would not have it any other way. When there were instances he needed someone to talk to, Aang was just a letter away. Even across the southern oceans, he was like the brother he did not know he needed, a person who he could talk to when there was no one else.

“I’m glad too,” Kuzon said.

They gathered the cups of the cool melon drink, intent on stealing Gyatso back from the dance floor and the crowds of children.

It was nice. They spent the next few days enjoying themselves in the light of spring, basking in the opening buds of fire lilies, and the crisp air.

The time came for them to separate and for Aang and Gyatso to return to the Southern Air Temple, and for some reason it was a little harder than normal for Kuzon to say goodbye. He thought of how lonely it had felt for a while, how his father and Anzu seemed to be doing other things with little time for him. He would miss Aang’s bright presence.

“I’ll see you in four months! For the Comet Festival!” shouted Kuzon, cupping his hands on either side of his mouth. “Don’t forget!”

“Okay! See you later, Kuzon!” Aang yelled back, waving both his arms in the air.

Gyatso lifted a hand, eyes crinkling. He flicked his writs, and Kuzon saw the two of them vanish into the clouds on Appa’s back. The bison let out a rueful moan.

-

A month passed, and the Fire Nation started to change. Kuzon supposed that he had noticed it earlier when his father and sister were gone for long stretches ranging from days to weeks. Being of a noble house, he was privy to the goings-on of the court. He was young and inexperienced, so even though he studied with his masters, there was much he was not yet allowed to hear.

Yet even this was different. There was a shift in the mood of both the palace and the court. Ever since rumors of a pregnant consort came to fruition, there were additional whispers of other things. The Fire Lord was desperate to find the Avatar. It was said that he had missed his old friend so dearly, that he wanted to see his reincarnation at whatever cost. Some of the younger nobles chalked it up to senile mawkishness, others said it was because he was getting old and wanted closure with far more respectable tones.

But there was something underneath it all that Kuzon could not quite place. His home emptied of people from both the main and branch families. Min Lee was called to train more often, and her older brother left to join the ranks of the military. The nobles that spoke against the Fire Lord began to die off because of various sicknesses.

There were posters on the streets now that advertised how great the navy was, how wonderful life as a soldier would be. You only had to be fourteen to join the training ranks, and sixteen to apply as a full soldier.

It bothered Kuzon, and he talked with Min Lee late at night about it, expressing his concerns. She gave him a worried look; the same one she had given him since they were children and she trained to protect him. But they did not come to any concrete conclusion.

The nights grew long and weary, and then Kuzon awoke to the white disk of the moon breaking through his curtains and the low growl of a sky bison.

He ran outside to the courtyard, Min Lee at his back. His father and sister were gone again, somewhere on the outer islands for a conference with other officials. As a result, there was little to no one left on the compound. He and Min Lee were the only ones that greeted Gyatso as he directed his bison to the ground.

The old airbender did not bother with formalities. He jumped off his bison and looked up. Kuzon’s heart dropped at the devastation on his features. “Aang is missing,” Gyatso said, stricken. He was clutching a rolled scroll at his side. “I was hoping he might be here.”

“What?” he breathed. “What happened?”

Gyatso avoided his eyes. “He ran away into a storm, and I couldn’t find him.”

“Why would he run away?!” shouted Kuzon. It was as if the world did not make sense anymore. This was unlike his friend. It was so unlike Aang.

Instead of answering, Gyatso stared at him, something wavering in the space between them like lightning in a typhoon. “I’ll find him. Do not worry. I’ll search the other temples.” Kuzon was not sure who he was trying to comfort. Gyatso paused, taking a deep breath. “Maybe…maybe you can check with Bumi.”

“Wait—” Kuzon started forward, but Min Lee held him back. Gyatso was already taking off on his bison and he shrunk into a black dot on the face of the full moon.

-

Another three months went by. Kuzon prepared to attend the Comet Festival by himself. The compound only had a handful of servants left, and the ailing, elderly, and child members of the families in his household were left behind. He was told that all that were old enough left to join the military ranks at the request of Fire Lord Sozin.

There were less visitors to the caldera, but Kuzon took solace in the fact that there were still a few from each nation that wanted to witness the festival. After all, the Comet Festival was only something that could be seen once every century. It was a once in a lifetime experience.

Though, Kuzon could not help but think of Aang as the sky reddened with the passing comet. He sat on the grass alone save for Min Lee, his stalwart protector. She stood with her arms crossed, a thoughtful expression on her face. She was sixteen, and old enough to enter the military, but she insisted that she stay behind unlike much of the branch family. Kuzon needed someone to keep an eye on him, she said. No one could disagree.

Kuzon saw the clouds brush back as the flames of the comet pushed them aside, saw the performers with their magnificent dances of vibrant fire on the stage, beating drums, the meager cheering crowds, the clapping foreigners. There were even people using their firebending to fly, a feat he did not know was possible.

Kuzon sparked a flame in his hand as if on instinct, seeing and feeling the burst of unknown power exemplify his usually weak firebending. Instead of being a mere tongue of flame, it was larger than his fists. He closed his fingers on it, snuffing it out.

 _Aang, where are you?_ he asked himself. His friend would have marveled at the sights and the sounds, the flapping flags and the confetti, the twirling people, and the running and screaming—

_Wait. What?_

Fire Nation soldiers ushered the citizens inside their houses, and Kuzon was pushed back into the crowds as firebenders grasped onto the collars of every airbender in attendance. Every airbender that they could. There were less than before things had started to change, but there were still some. Kuzon watched with wide eyes as a man punched a flaming fist into the chest of an abbess, cut down a monk, beheaded an adolescent boy with knives of combusting fire.

“Move!” a soldier demanded of him, and he was forcibly shoved back to the center of the caldera. “The Air Nation army is attacking us!”

Kuzon did not see anyone attacking anyone. No one from the Air Nomads had been armed. No one attacked except the Fire Nation.

Min Lee snatched his hand. Left and right there were burning corpses of Air Nomad robes, relics strewn about, whining sky bison, and a lemur half-dead in a heap on the sidewalk. There were only a few of them there, but to Kuzon there were too many. He saw a monk blast air in a defensive maneuver and heard another firebender claim that the Fire Nation was being invaded.

But it looked like a lie to Kuzon.

It _had_ to be a lie.

They rounded a building, sliding past multiple guards and back into the compound. He was told to stay put, to hide, to not show his face until the Fire Nation held the enemies at bay. But Kuzon was in shock, and he could not move.

He waited with bated breath, fear trembling in every muscle. He thought of Aang and Gyatso, and how they could not have possibly betrayed the Fire Nation. There was no way, _no way_ his friends would seek out a way to destroy them. It had to be a lie. It had to be.

He pulled his knees to his chest, leaning back on the door to his bedroom. Min Lee stood guard just outside. He could hear her steady footfalls as she paced along the tiles. She never spoke, and she rarely did anyway. The silence was deafening.

“This can’t be happening,” he mumbled. He continued to repeat that to himself into the morning. The comet had passed them by. He had forgotten about the festival. He did not sleep. He did not eat.

The day turned again into night. He heard a knock, but he did not answer. There was a shuffle, then a sigh. A familiar voice broke through the door crack. “I know how you must be feeling, my son,” said his father, “to know that your friends betrayed you.”

 _They didn’t,_ he thought to himself. _They couldn’t._

“But I am here to tell you that we have nipped the problem in the bud,” his father continued. “We attacked them before they could do further damage. I led my units to attack the Air Temples at the Fire Lord’s behest. Your family and your nation are honored this day. Those traitors are no more.”

Kuzon shut his eyes, a burning in his throat. He thought of his friend, his joyful smile, his happy countenance. The way he and Gyatso had worked together, laughed together. Kuzon thought of how he had been the stockier one between he and Aang, how Aang had the growth spurt before he did even though he was younger, how he was never made fun of for being less talented, how he had thanked him for being his friend.

His father left and Kuzon cried.

“No,” he whispered into his arms, “no, no, no, _no.”_

He knew what he saw. There were innocents being slaughtered on the streets that day. He knew the Air Nomads and how peaceful they were. Aang did not fight unless he had to, and neither did Gyatso. He knew that the Council of Elders did not have a military. It was against their way, their nature. Gyatso had explained it to him when he was younger and curious.

Kuzon never was a good firebender, but he was always good at finding patterns and reading in between the lines. He knew who was in the wrong.

-

Anzu returned home a war hero. She had gone to the Western Air Temple and proudly proclaimed that she had annihilated many of the abbesses there. She hugged Kuzon close to her middle, but he did not feel the same excitement he would have before. He only resented her, and he hid it well.

The Fire Nation began to fan out to the Earth Kingdom, he learned. Fire Lord Sozin wanted to share the prosperous wealth of their country.

But Kuzon could see what Sozin was really doing. He had read about Chin the Conqueror in the many scrolls he was given to study.

“Those traitors were trying to take our land, can you believe it?” his father said with an incredulous tone during dinner, shaking his head and pounding a goblet on the table. “The Air Nomads were a shameless, barbaric lot. I am glad they are gone, and that we continue to quash those who escaped.” He stopped only to drink a gulp of rice wine. “They were separating children from their families at birth! What kind of disgusting act is that? If the Avatar was born into their nation, I am glad we saved them from it.”

Anzu nodded, a grim line between her eyebrows. “I found two females _together,_ father! They were affectionate with each other as you and mother once were! How uncivilized.”

Kuzon wanted to speak out, wanted to say that the Air Nomads valued all kinds of love and in every form. He wanted to explain to them that Aang and Gyatso never saw national divides, never saw a difference between male and female, and marriages that did not produce biological heirs. It had been beautiful, and the Fire Nation had devastated them and their culture. He was ashamed to say that he did nothing.

The Fire Nation had destroyed his friends.

It was then that Kuzon made a decision. A few nights later when both his father and sister were dispatched to the western rim of the Earth Kingdom continent, he packed a knapsack and snuck out through the back door of the kitchen.

He found the burned body that he had rolled into a woven mat a day ago. The dead body of a kid who had evaded the initial attacks and hid. There were still too many for the sanitation team to clean, and many wanted to ignore the dead of the supposed traitors. It was bloated and had a loathsome stench, but he plugged his nose and did what he had to. He undressed the dead Air Nomad teenager, snipping off the clothes and pretending not to see the peeling skin, and slipped on a pair of his own pajamas.

“You’re really doing it,” came a voice he had not expected to hear.

Kuzon startled, seeing the hazy face of Min Lee. He held his breath, unable to speak.

“You’re leaving,” she stated. It was not a question.

“I have to,” he said.

She looked at him in a way he had not seen her do so before. “Then let me help you,” she replied.

Her hands were skillful, deft, as she arranged the clothes better than he had. She was not deterred by the smell, and even less so by the sightless eyes and the burn straight through the middle. She directed Kuzon to cut off his topknot and they placed it at the head of the body.

His room was close to the kitchens, no one was awake at this hour, and there was no one residing in the main family section beside Kuzon. It was the perfect night to do what needed to be done. They carried the body to his bed, tucking it under the sheets, and with a mighty few blasts of fire, Kuzon set the body and his room aflame.

He ran out, knapsack in hand and devoid of his pajamas. Min Lee followed him, making sure he got out to the cargo carriage hold before sounding the alarm.

They made it just to the edge where there were barrels, when Kuzon halted. Min Lee started to protest when he raised a hand.

There was a little girl with torn clothes hiding inside one of the barrels. Air Nomad clothes. She was skinny and gaunt, a blank look in her eyes. She had a full head of hair, brown and messy, falling into her face and just past her shoulders. She looked about seven years old. She must have been on her first trip around the world.

“Hey,” Kuzon whispered, brushing his fingertips on her back.

She jumped, fear clouding her gaze as she looked to him. “I can see auras…my guardian taught me…but her aura went away, and I hid…and I…” She stopped; tearful gray eyes boring into Kuzon’s. “Will you kill me too?”

He shook his head, suddenly becoming aware of the last thing he needed to do. He glimpsed Min Lee, an understanding passing between the two of them, before turning back to the girl.

“You’ll become part of the branch family of my household. You’ll follow all their customs and traditions, and no matter what, you won’t tell anyone who you really are. Your new name is Ta Lee. You’ll forget everything from your past. You’re not an airbender anymore. You’re not an Air Nomad. You’re Ta Lee.”

The little girl gasped as he took her hand and carried her until she was in Min Lee’s arms.

“Min Lee,” Kuzon said, eyes never leaving the child’s terrified face, “you’ll take care of her. Teach her everything you know.”

Min Lee looked resolute, but she did not deny what he wanted.

“And when you sound the alarm, tell them I died of grief.”

Kuzon turned away and felt rather than saw the two of them leave him behind. He crept into the cargo hold of the carriage that would supply the military rations in the morning, sealing himself into the same barrel that he had found the orphaned Air Nomad girl in. He held himself together, grasping onto nothing and to everything at the same time.

He was leaving his family and his nation behind, but he would never turn back if it meant that he could do the right thing.

Later, when he arrived by ship to the western front of the Earth Kingdom, it was the simplest thing to blend into the crowds of the colonists of Yu Dao. He had heard of the colony in writings, but he had not known what Sozin had planned when he created it during the time of Avatar Roku. He thought it was just a village where the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom citizens lived together. He did not know that it was only part of a larger, more sinister puzzle that he had not yet solved.

Kuzon pushed himself forward, step by step, following the roads and the ostrich horses to the doorstep of Omashu.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, that might have been a little rough. I do hope you enjoyed that read though. There are 3 chapters in this in total. 
> 
> Also, I would like to point out that Azulon was canonically born right after the war started, meaning that Sozin had to be in his 80s when his son was born. So, that is a note for you guys out there if you were wondering why I wrote that particular scene the way I did.


	2. Traction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Kuzon?” came a curious voice.
> 
> He moved his eyes, seeing his friend standing before him with that same lanky form, that same unruly hair that stuck up everywhere, that same crooked mouth.
> 
> Kuzon wriggled around again, only to feel the earth tighten. “I know what you must think of me and of my people, Bumi…but you have to believe me when I say that I had nothing to do with any of it!” he exclaimed. 
> 
> -
> 
> Or, Kuzon and Bumi work together to find Aang.

Under the rule of Fire Lord Sozin, things had changed so gradually that Kuzon did not even notice. Though many of the changes occurred before he was born, to know just how much was lost through the years made him angrier. There had been a time when the Fire Nation was not bent on maintaining a large military “just in case there was a threat.” Their military presence had expanded as he grew older, and he had only witnessed it because of the involvement his family had.

There was a time when Avatar Roku was alive that couples could marry whoever they wanted if there was love and consent. But that had dissolved. Kuzon had read it, he had heard it from his sister’s mouth when she criticized the Air Nomads for their practices, from his father’s lips when he claimed the Air Nomads were inferior because they were different.

It was all based on a lie, and it was too big of a lie for Kuzon to dismantle by himself. He could not help but think that if he had not been around airbenders as such a young age, had not met Aang or Gyatso, or other monks or abbesses, that he would think differently. He could not help but wonder what his life would have been like if he did not know Bumi or had not been introduced to other customs and beliefs. He supposed he was privileged enough to form his own opinion, to be able to study the things he wanted with the scrolls he was given. But though his family had the same access, he was the only one that was afforded the truth through the people he met.

In the end, it was not texts that molded the mind, but it was experiences and people. What Sozin did started slow, and that was frightening. Kuzon would forever find shame in the fact that it had taken the murders of thousands of people for him to realize there was something wrong.

What was once a vivid world, now seemed devoid of all color. Even the sunrays lost their usual gilded hue and were replaced by lines of stark white that broke through the thick stratus clouds that formed a sinister layer upon the horizon, skimming the mountainsides like a pall over the dead.

The drizzle started when the great city of Omashu was in sight. It towered over him, its mountainous shape a shadow in the thin curtain of rain. He could barely make out the sepia tones of its buildings and inclines behind the grays of the day.

Kuzon shouldered his pack, legs shaking. It had been weeks since he had left the Fire Nation. He made most of the journey to Omashu on foot, had hitchhiked on wagons for short terms, but he did not have much to offer other than a few coins of Earth Kingdom gold that had begun to run out.

He had made sure to change into clothes that did not betray his ancestry. When he shopped in Yu Dao, he bought a tunic and pants made of course dyed cotton meant for fieldwork, dreading the feel on his skin as it scratched. His hair was loose and short, his topknot gone, but he could still work his way around a Fire Nation crowd with the right words.

For all intents and purposes, Kuzon now looked like a peasant farmer, albeit without the callouses. He was lucky that he was one of the few from the Fire Nation with brown eyes. He was of noble blood, and though he had the sun-browned complexion of a farmer, he did not have the disposition. He would have to make do with what he had.

Kuzon stepped out of the forest, raising a hand to block the rain, and spotted the earthen bridge that would lead him to the entrance to Omashu. There were battlements surrounding the outer wall of the city that had not been there before. Earth Kingdom soldiers stood their ground, marching from one end of the upper wall to the other. It would not be a simple task to get inside.

Kuzon glanced to the left, taking a deep breath. It would be the long way in then.

“I’m going to stink after this,” he muttered, inching his way down into the valley that separated Omashu from the rest of the foothills that surrounded it.

The mist that rose from the rain and the humidity of the beginning of autumn both chilled him and acted as his cover. He made the familiar path downward, careful to avoid the places he remembered, and the lookouts that he saw. He had to thank his previous adventures for this knowledge, because he would not have found the sewer entrance as easily as he had if not for them.

It took a lot of prying and a grunt of energy before the rusty door cracked open. Blackened water spilled out and he gagged before letting himself in. Kuzon waded through the muddy, dirty streams, latching onto the walls to keep him upright. It seemed like an eternity before he made it to the ladder that would lead up to the surface.

He heaved and pushed open the manhole, pulling himself upward. After he slid the lid back to where it had been, he tried to ring out his travel cloak and pants with a grimace.

Looking around, Kuzon saw that he was exactly where he remembered he would have ended up. He was standing in a back alley, behind the main market area. There were less people about there, but it could have been due to the rain that had picked up while he was beneath the city. He groaned when he felt the purple pentapi stuck to his cheek and neck.

“You gotta rub them with your finger to get them off,” Aang had said a few years back when the three of them had discovered they were covered in pentapi after their escapade outside of Omashu. Kuzon and Bumi marveled at how good with animals their friend was.

Kuzon did just as Aang showed them and their nubby tentacles popped off him in seconds. He tossed them into a nearby pot full of rainwater.

He knew he looked like a pauper, and perhaps that was to his advantage for what he was about to do. At the very least, no one would kick him out of the city right away.

He should have anticipated the stares and the soldiers walking among them. It seemed that news of war had spread even this far. People looked tired, and a little scared. There was a tension in the air that he had not known to have existed in a city as lively as Omashu was. The Fire Nation may have not touched the southern part of the Earth Kingdom yet, but they had already moved in on the continent. It was only a matter of time.

There was a little boy clutching an Air Nomad necklace and crying to his mother. Kuzon glanced away. He knew what he had to do.

When he made it up to the entrance of the palace, the guards raised their eyebrows at him.

“I need to see Prince Bumi,” he said, a little shakily. He forced himself to keep his resolve.

A broad-shouldered guard to his right frowned. “You can’t just walk in here without an audience,” he replied. “And what is wrong with you? Are you sick?” He crinkled his nose.

Kuzon thought quickly, remembering the joke Bumi had said when they were covered in spots left over from the suction of the pentapi. (“We look like we have possum chicken pox! Or maybe…pentapox!”)

“It’s pentapox,” Kuzon said. “I need to talk to him about a new disease going around.”

The guards backed away from him. “Why would we allow a plague into the palace? Turn around and see a healer!”

“Tell him it’s Kuzon!” he insisted with growing desperation. “Please, I need to see him!”

Now, both men looked doubtful. “That sounds like a Fire Nation name,” said one. “Your kind aren’t allowed here.”

Frantic, Kuzon surged forward and aimed for the grand doors that would lead him to the inside of the palace. The guards earthbended him backward, shackling him to the ground and never touching him. He could not move any of his limbs. He gritted his teeth, struggling in the confines of the rock that braced him. He did not dare firebend.

“Please!” he cried. “Please! I need to see him!”

A layer of earth was bound around his mouth and he breathed it in, attempting to yell but only releasing muffled sounds. He did not know what else to do or what else to say. How could he get these people to trust him? He _needed_ Bumi to see him. There was no other way. If he did not have Bumi’s aid then he would be alone, and being alone was all he had been for the past few months—for the past few weeks knowing that his father had led the armies to the Air Nomads’ destruction.

“Kuzon?” came a curious voice.

He moved his eyes, seeing his friend standing before him with that same lanky form, that same unruly hair that stuck up everywhere, that same crooked mouth.

Kuzon wriggled around again, only to feel the earth tighten. “I know what you must think of me and of my people, Bumi…but you have to believe me when I say that I had nothing to do with any of it!” he exclaimed.

“Silence, traitor!” the guard holding him back commanded, whacking him with the blunt end of a lance to the back of his head until he saw spots.

“I’m begging you, Bumi! He has to be out there! I know you got my letter!” Kuzon cried. “We can find Aang together!”

Bumi moved toward him, raising a hand. The men must have understood what that meant because the rocks keeping Kuzon in place sunk back into the ground. He looked at Kuzon with a strange skepticism, mismatched dark green and light green eyes observing him in a way that made him feel like he was some sort of experiment. He squatted in front of Kuzon, an uncharacteristically serious expression on his face.

“You’re sure he isn’t dead like the other airbenders?” he asked, tipping his head.

“No,” replied Kuzon, quivering. “But I’m sure there’s a chance he’s not.”

Bumi stared at him again, then nodded. The sentries backed away with incredulous looks. “How can you trust him, Highness?” one of them inquired.

Bumi only grinned. The gap in his teeth made the smile more disconcerting. “You’ve got to think of all the possibilities! Why would someone from the Fire Nation come all this way dressed like that?”

“…to spy on us, sir?”

Bumi laughed and snorted at the same time. He took Kuzon’s hand and pulled him up to stand.

-

The royal family had taken Kuzon entering their domain surprisingly well. Well, there was only the Queen of Omashu—Bumi’s mother—that he had to impress. She was just as eccentric as her youngest son. She was not what Kuzon would call a beautiful woman in the traditional sense. She was gangly in a way only teenage boys seemed to be. Her dark hair frayed all around a feathered crown, and she had a questionable taste in fashion that consisted of elongated cloaks and mismatched shoes.

She had greeted him with a feast and open arms, much to the chagrin of the court. After Bumi explained that pentapox was a made-up sickness, and that Kuzon did indeed smell because of his association with sewer water, there was less griping about a potential plague. However, that did not stop servants from insisting that he take an immediate bath, and Kuzon could not agree more. He really did have a stench worse than a pile of sun drying fish on the deck of a fisherman’s boat.

Crown Prince Rohan who was Bumi’s older brother, was out on the western front to support the Earth Kingdom soldiers there. The Earth King in Ba Sing Se had ordered military might to be strengthened, and Omashu had felt that offering one of their strongest benders to command a unit was a move that would increase their chances of keeping the Fire Nation back. Along with their own men, Rohan had left only days after the comet arrived. Bumi was as talented an earthbender as they came, but he was too young to be sent into battle.

That left Bumi and the queen in charge of gathering any intelligence that came into the city. After days of searching maps and listening to what Bumi knew, they had finally come to a startling conclusion.

“The Fire Nation is hunting them down,” spoke Kuzon. He pointed to circles on the map. “Look here, and down here. Most of the targets are in the Earth Kingdom where the Air Nomads travel the most…and they’re usually around the same areas.”

“In the mountains,” Bumi added, stroking his chin.

Kuzon and Bumi shared a look. He knew what they were both thinking. The Air Nomads typically lived high, near the clouds. If there was any place that Aang’s people felt safe, it was there. Whoever survived the initial attack disappeared into the places that were familiar, even if they were not any of the Air Temples.

“He could be there,” continued Bumi, breaking the silence.

“We can’t know for sure,” stated Kuzon, glancing at the stylistic drawing of the islands that made up the Southern Air Temple. “We can try the mountains where the Cave of Two Lovers is. I passed it on the way here. The problem is…”

“…it’s close to the western front,” Bumi finished for him. “Tricky, tricky business. But we’re thinking of all the things. If we know Aang, he would hide where he could avoid and evade.”

“That means lots of mountains,” said Kuzon. “But so close to the fighting? I don’t know…”

“It’s thorny stuff,” said Bumi, “but if our friend is alive and kicking, he wouldn’t be in the Patola Mountains.”

 _If he was alive,_ was all Kuzon could think about. Aang had run away from Gyatso for some unforeseen reason, but it could have been a blessing in disguise. There was a chance, even if it was small one, that Aang was not at any of the temples when the Fire Nation struck. Maybe he was in hiding, like the few airbenders left were. _Or maybe Aang is dead,_ a lesser part of Kuzon thought.

They planned for a small expedition team to come with them that would consist of two others who were handpicked earthbenders. They talked of supplies and of rations they would need, of calculated movements and routes to take.

They were interrupted only when an urgent knock sounded on the door of the map room, and a messenger came scurrying in. They were ordered into the throne room where the queen sat on her dais. She took a deep breath, an unreadable expression on her face. She stepped down the stairs and halted in front of them before turning her gaze down to the floor, then to Bumi.

She reached into her wide sleeves and pulled a piece of olive colored cloth from them. She presented the object to Bumi who took it from her. His lips parted slightly.

It was a military armband with gold characters sewn into it. It was ripped in places and burned along the edges. There were splatters of blood that covered the name embroidered into it, but it was enough.

Bumi closed his eyes and let his hands drop to his side, holding onto the armband like it was sand sliding through his fingers. The fabric rustled to the floor, slithering in the quiet, and Kuzon turned his head away.

-

In the days that arrived, there was nothing else to do but wait and listen.

Kuzon grew an aversion to his fire, developing an impulse to puke when he even so much as used it to warm himself up when the cool autumn breeze filtered through the palace.

There was nothing to admire about fire that he could think of. All it brought was death and destruction.

The halls were empty of life and people. The streets seemed cold. There was no body to bring, as it would take too much time and effort to carry the dead from a raging battlefield. Instead there was ceremony. Those in the palace wore white. There was a show of entombing nothing into the ground. The rumble under Kuzon’s feet was what kept him sane during the whole ordeal.

All he could think about was fire and how it burned through torsos, blackened stone, and ripped skin from bones.

He was weaker than Bumi. He could see it in his friend’s face. Bumi did not cry. He buried himself in the ridiculous. He said nothing about becoming the new Crown Prince. He continued to snort with laughter at things that Kuzon could not quite understand, but strangest of all, he forged through their earlier plans with a renewed vengeance. That was the only indication to Kuzon that there was something different.

The Queen of Omashu only agreed to their scheme because neither of them flaunted a need for entering the front. To Kuzon, it felt as if she was grasping at things to do to turn the tide of the war. There was something seductive about resisting the Fire Nation in ways that the Fire Lord could never be aware of. If finding one airbender alive was an act of defiance, it was an act of power.

So, the four of them made their move into the mountains.

The two earthbenders that came with Kuzon and Bumi were skilled twin warriors that were trained in protecting royalty. Bumi tested them himself.

In another two days, they passed through a seedy village at the base of the mountains, only clicks away from the entrance to the Cave of Two Lovers. There were murmurs they heard in the market of how they had lost the visiting Air Nomads, of how they had left as soon as they heard the temples had been attacked. Some had gone further into the mountains and had flown into the hills.

“We have to be on the right track,” whispered Kuzon to Bumi who nodded.

They marched past everything when evening settled. The slopes were easy to climb with three earthbenders to guide. Kuzon’s fingers itched to spark a flame to give them light, and Bumi gave him a look that told him he should. But as soon as he did, the light sputtered out and he bit his bottom lip hard, the metallic taste of blood on his tongue. He shuddered, trying to keep his supper in. He could almost hear the screams on the day the comet came.

“Use the spark rocks for the lantern,” said Bumi to one of the earthbender twins. He did not ask Kuzon for fire again.

They followed the trail upward, utilizing the map that Bumi had marked after gathering information from the village on which direction the Air Nomads that had been there had gone. 

Up ahead, the trees petered out into bare rock. The sliver of the moon illuminated the path. Upon the winds, Kuzon could make out the _whoosh_ of gusts of air. They came in and out, echoing through the valley.

Kuzon stopped. “That’s the sound of firebending,” he reported, stunned.

Without looking back, he sprinted forward and ran up the slanted hill, pumping his legs. Adrenaline rushed through his body. He could hear Bumi following close behind, and the others earthbending a clearer way for them.

He could see flashes of orange light, could hear the grumbles of a skirmish. There was a piece of a yellow textile that flew into his face, and Kuzon swiped it off, throwing it into the bushes. He made his way to the entrance to a cave that he saw, just barely hidden by a copse of pine trees.

What he saw when he arrived surprised him. There were two older teenagers who looked to be about eighteen or nineteen. One of them was wearing Earth Kingdom clothes, but her golden pupils gave her away as Fire Nation. She was dark-skinned and had black hair like Kuzon. Her partner would have been completely bald if not for the fuzz of hair that sprouted from his scalp. His gray eyes flickered with anger as he airbended three firebenders backwards.

Kuzon could feel the blood rush from his head when he realized what the Fire Nation was doing. There were Air Nomad relics strewn about the cave like a home, a trap for those who came searching for their brethren. There were about a dozen soldiers in red attacking the duo, aiming most of their ire upon the airbender.

Kuzon hurried to protect him, kicking out to trip a firebender who had successfully burned through the airbender’s sleeve. The girl swung her sword in an arc, disabling a soldier that came at her with a spear. She cut him down and he gurgled, falling backward.

Bumi and the other earthbenders trapped others. A sharp stone pierced through a soldier’s heart and Kuzon had to distract himself with punching someone in the jaw.

The airbender screamed, a fireball scraping his back, and the girl wasted no time in plunging her sword downward until the man who threw it was no longer a threat.

Kuzon forced his palm in the face of a firebender, willing his fire to burn the bridge of his nose. The woman opened her mouth in a silent scream, fell forward, and the girl with the sword killed her too. Kuzon lurched to the edge of the cave and threw up, smoke leaving his fingertips just as the last of the soldiers were incapacitated.

He turned just in time to see the girl angle herself over the downed adversaries, a scowl marring her slender features.

“What are you doing, Aka?” asked the airbender. He clutched his burned upper arm.

“Using my sword to stamp my identity onto the battlefield,” she answered.

She sliced off the topknots of every soldier in her radius in what seemed like one strike. “They don’t deserve to be called Fire Nation,” she spat. “Traitors, all of them.”

Kuzon collapsed onto his knees. Bumi caught his arm, something akin to worry appearing in his eyes.

“Aang isn’t here,” Kuzon said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“He’s not,” Bumi agreed. “But we can help one of his people.”

-

The bodies were easy to dispose of, especially since none of them cared. The airbender seemed to though. He murmured a prayer into the breeze and Kuzon was reminded so much of Gyatso that he had to shut his eyes and pretend that he was anywhere but there.

The twin earthbenders rolled the dead off the mountainside, grim lines in every movement they made.

They all stood up, seeing each other fully for the first time. Kuzon noticed that the airbender had the same light skin that Aang did but lacked the tattoos of a master. His clothes were not of the Air Nomads but were the greens of the Earth Kingdom. He was the tallest one in their group.

“Thank you for saving us,” he said to Kuzon and Bumi. “We owe you a debt.”

Bumi shook his head. “You don’t owe us anything except a meal,” he joked with a casual smile.

Aka walked to the airbender’s side. “We don’t trust easily,” she stated coldly. “Why are you here?”

“We’re looking for our friend from the Southern Air Temple,” said Bumi. “We thought there was a chance that maybe…he was here.”

The mood changed. Aka did not look so suspicious of them anymore. There was a look of understanding that replaced her distrust. “I’m sorry that we can’t help you,” she went on, “but Janu here is from the Northern Air Temple.” She gulped, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “We were traveling together throughout the Earth Kingdom when it happened, and we’ve been running ever since. We thought…well…when we heard a storyteller in the village below say something about other airbenders up in these parts, we thought it would be worth it to meet up with them and form a group. As you can see, the storyteller must have been a Fire Nation implant. Apparently, there are ambushes like this all over. Nowhere is safe for an Air Nomad.”

“There must be somewhere safe for them,” Kuzon said, trying for hope.

Aka glanced at him; her lips turned downward. “There is,” she replied, “and I’ve been looking for them. I heard that they have a base somewhere in the village, but we got distracted and…” She took a breath, pausing. “I know now that we should have kept our path. If you come with us, I can take you to them. If there is anyone who can help you find your friend, it’s them.”

“Who?” asked Kuzon, but she did not answer. She gestured at them to follow.

Bumi shrugged at the earthbenders and at him. There was some unspoken air that said to follow them.

The night dipped into the dark. The moon shone brighter against the backdrop of midnight, and by the time they returned to the village they had once left, dawn was skirting the horizon.

Kuzon’s eyes burned, but he knew he was determined. He and Bumi both were. If this was the place to find Aang, they would do anything to get there.

Aka led them into a dimly lit tavern with a rickety sign with a carved flower on it. It was at the bottom of an inn. They were only allowed in because of the cranky barmaid that was still awake and cleaning the various empty cups that once held rice wine. She rolled her eyes when they followed Aka to a corner with a table. An old man was slumped next to it, snoring. He sat next to a strange round board with circular pieces on it.

Aka slapped the man and he jolted awake. Satisfied, she sat across him, grabbing a tile off the board with the image of a lotus upon it.

“What are you doing?” asked Janu. Kuzon was about to ask the same thing.

“Janu, you have to trust me like you always have,” she answered with a roll of her shoulders. She placed the tile on the center of the board.

The man across her smiled. “I see you have chosen the white lotus gambit. Not many still cling to the ancient ways.”

“Those who do can always find a friend,” Aka said. “Let’s play.”

They moved across the table in tandem with each other until they formed an unusual pattern across the board. It was in the shape of a flower.

When they were done, the man bowed to her. “Welcome sister. The White Lotus opens wide to those who know her secrets.”

For a while, Kuzon was thoroughly confused, and he was sure Bumi felt the same way. They were led through a series of hallways behind the bar. The twin earthbenders opted to stand guard outside the tavern, watching for intruders and protecting their prince.

Aka rapped on a backdoor.

“Who knocks at the guarded gate?” a voice rasped behind it.

“One who has eaten the fruit and tasted its mysteries,” she responded.

At first, everyone except Aka was refused entry. She scowled and showed them the hilt of her sword. “They need friends too. You’ll let them inside. You know who I am.”

The man at the door stuttered as if he saw a ghost, muttering something about a being related to a grand lotus or other. The door slammed shut. Kuzon and Bumi were soon surrounded by cushions and a room filled with people from all walks of life. From what it appeared, they were also people from different nations. There was a woman in Water Tribe blue on the opposite end.

“Who are you?” Janu questioned, eyes wide.

“We are the Order of the White Lotus,” Aka said, facing them all. “My family has been part of this secret organization for generations…since around the time of Kyoshi. These are the people that can help you…that can help us. If we want to keep the remaining Air Nomads safe, this is the only way.”

“And how are we going to do that?” frowned Janu, crossing his arms.

“You can hide with my family,” Aka offered. “The White Lotus can get us to the Fire Nation without any problems. We’re a prominent house and no one would question us. We are well-known blacksmiths and sword masters. My family has taught swordsmanship to people from all over the world…the arts should belong to everyone.” She looked at Janu with determination. “You already know us and my parents. We’ll keep you safe. We can protect you and your identity.” 

“What about finding our friend?” interjected Kuzon, excitement coursing through him.

She looked to him, gold eyes suddenly liquid. “Work with us,” she said. “If we look for and save the Air Nomads that are left, we can find your friend. We have always stood for equality across all four nations, for beauty, for truth…what the Fire Nation is doing is against all that.”

Kuzon stared at her. He and Bumi shared a meaningful look.

Bumi gulped before bowing to her. “We’ll work with you,” he said. Kuzon joined him soon after.

“Good,” Aka smirked. “Then you two should learn how to play Pai Sho. Besides, if we look for the Air Nomads, we might be able to find the Avatar.”

“And how are we going to do that? With the Air Nomads?” Janu said from behind her, frustration clouding his words. “They’re almost completely wiped out, and we don’t know if the Avatar survived!”

“If we’re going to keep hope alive, it’s something we can strive to do,” Aka said, straightening. “The Fire Nation will go after the Water Tribes next. It’s the next nation in the cycle. All we can do is hope that it won’t be any time soon.”

The conversation lulled in the background. Kuzon and Bumi met in the corner of the room, discussing the kind of strategies they could employ with this much help. If Kuzon was honest with himself, he did not care about finding the Avatar so much as finding Aang. He wanted Gyatso to be alive, wanted it more than anything, but something told him that if anyone could still be out there against all odds, it was their friend.

Aang, the friend that both of them shared. The friend that ran away. The friend that he had to believe escaped Fire Lord Sozin’s terrorizing reality.

If he was out there, Kuzon was going to find him, and he was going to use the White Lotus to do it. And maybe along the way, he could save another innocent life like Ta Lee’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything is connected.
> 
> Leave some love below if you liked it!


	3. Revelation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kuzon was fifteen summers when he discovered that Sozin had decided to declare that all dragons could be killed by a firebender for glory.
> 
> -
> 
> Or, the war goes on, and Kuzon grows with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the last chapter of this crazy thing. I'm glad you reached this point! Fair warning, this chapter is not a pretty one. It's smack in the middle of a war, and there is a lot of death in it. I would also like to warn that there is an allusion to wartime rape. It is not seen and it is not explicitly mentioned, but it is alluded to. 
> 
> With that said, please continue! I hope you enjoy this!

Kuzon sometimes thought of his father and sister back in the Fire Nation. Soon after, with resounding clarity, he shoved the treacherous thoughts down the sinister crevice from which they came.

He had seen the devastation that war had caused in the first year, and then the next. Soldiers limped back toward Omashu with broken hearts and broken minds. They saw specters in the night when there were none, babbled about dank prison cells, and moaned about lost limbs. It was easy from then on for Kuzon to resent his father for being a general, and to hate Anzu for perpetuating his violence. For massacring Aang’s people.

More often than not, he dreamed of his lost friend, Aang. In his dreams, he would see himself finding him in a far-off Earth Kingdom village, holing himself up with Appa in a cave. He would see Aang as they were when they first met…by complete accident when he spent too much time observing the flying bison that had landed in the middle of the capital and resulting in a laughing Aang staring at him with raised eyebrows as Kuzon had fallen out from the branches of an acacia tree.

Aang had been his closest friend, his confidant, since childhood. Bumi had come into the picture as they grew older, but Aang had always been there. He had been there when his mother had died of red fever, coming quickly with Gyatso when Kuzon was on his tenth summer. He had been a letter away when Kuzon told Aang of Anzu leaving for the navy. He thought of the easy way Aang had said after a fight, “It doesn’t matter if we’re different! All that matters is that we understand each other!”

Aang had been constant, a little brother he never got to have. Kuzon felt protective of him in a way that he imagined Anzu must have once felt about himself.

But now, things were different.

The war had not left him untouched. He could no longer firebend the same way he used to. He had never been overtly gifted in the art, but he was by no means a weak shot. He could not bring himself to conjure anything that was not pathetic. He could heat his hands, produce smoke, but the little strings of flame that came from his fists only served as mere distraction in a fight. All he was good for was for igniting candles and campfires. He could hardly maintain a flame in his palm.

He saw ghosts in his dreams, much like the soldiers who came home did. There were churning pools of blood in every single one of them. He saw the pallid faces of the airbenders at the Comet Festival, the tortured bison left behind, the quivering façade of Ta Lee as he gave her to Min Lee to care for.

If there was any person he missed, it was Min Lee. But he could not return to her and he could not return to his old home. Not when there was blood under his fingernails and the shades of dead children lurking the noble dwellings in the caldera.

So, he found himself losing himself in his search for Aang with Bumi’s help.

With a tip from the Order of the White Lotus, Kuzon and Bumi followed a trail up the southern mountains of the Earth Kingdom. It was near an Earth Kingdom military camp that was guarding the border that the Fire Nation had been hacking at for months. Omashu, being the strongest hold in the area, set up barracks in the vicinity. As the only prince alive, the queen had reluctantly sent her last remaining son to assist with command.

Kuzon had become a peculiar part of the royal family and was treated as both a foreigner and a brother to the prince. It helped that Kuzon himself was familiar with strategy, and his input was proven invaluable when he proved time and again that the Fire Nation employed certain methods to certain situations. He was not nobility anymore, but he was an ally, an advisor, a friend.

Soon, there was a lull in battle, and a messenger named Lee came in the night to deliver a white lotus tile in a pouch to Bumi’s tent. When Bumi flipped it around, there was a secret inscription that told them of Air Nomads that had been spotted in a nearby mountain range to the south of their camp, just within a day’s journey.

“We’re leaving for a two-day reconnaissance mission,” Bumi informed his men. The general could continue without them. The Fire Nation would not be attacking anytime soon. Their naval fleet was still a week away.

Kuzon and Bumi followed Lee, the earthbender who had been sent as a messenger. He was a soldier who joined the Omashu forces from Gaoling, and a young member of the Order. He was short, unassuming, but with a determined face.

The three of them mounted their ostrich horses with relative ease, and Kuzon was grateful that Bumi had taken the time in the past two years to teach him to ride something other than a komodo rhino.

As they climbed the slope, Kuzon could feel the dry air peppering his skin and cracking his lips. There had been a drought and months without rain. The crops in the southwestern Earth Kingdom had begun to shrivel, and Omashu had only survived because of the quick thinking of the queen and Bumi who had ordered the construction of a rice grain storage when the war started.

The next day, just as the noon sun peaked in the sky, Kuzon saw the caves. He and Bumi glanced at each other, excitement springing their steps, and left their exasperated companion behind. But when they entered the cave, there was no one there but a dying pile of embers upon an old fire. Footsteps led outside and disappeared into a hidden path upward.

That was when Kuzon saw something he would never forget.

Kuzon was fifteen summers when he discovered that Sozin had decided to declare that all dragons could be killed by a firebender for glory. He had found this out when he, Bumi, and Lee fought off a malicious firebender who tried to take the dragon’s head.

Matters were made worse when the two refugee Air Nomads they had been tipped off to were trying to save a golden dragon egg with knob-like designs on it, from another crazed firebender intent on crushing it. The firebender who had already killed the mother wanted to attack the airbenders too.

The carcass of the female dragon snaked on the crest of the mountain in a heap of dulled cerise scales and ash.

All Kuzon could think about was how he and Aang had saved that egg from poachers all those years ago, and now, it seemed that the Fire Nation itself could not cherish the original source for firebending as they once had. It was with a dawning realization that Kuzon knew that not only were the Air Nomads in danger, but so were the dragons. Two groups of living beings who found their homes in the skies and the highlands, only to be cut down.

“Stop!” called one of the Air Nomad girls. She appeared to be a young teenager, around the same age as Aang would be. Her long, braided hair flapped in the wind as she pushed a slice of air at the firebender approaching her.

The only intelligence they had received from the Order was that there were two young Air Nomads in the area, but not exactly how they looked like. It had been too precarious to get close. Now they knew why. Their dwelling had been near what was once a dragon nest.

“Please! Stop! Just take my life instead!” she yelled again.

Bumi moved forward with Lee, earthbending pillars of rock to block the firebender trying to take the egg. Kuzon extracted his blade. He noticed an arrow lodged in the neck of the dead dragon. There was another lying beside it. Along its point was some sort of yellowish liquid that trickled to the ground. He observed this just as a sharp _twang_ rang out through the trees.

“MAYA!” the girl cried, this time spinning in a whirlwind, taking the egg with her. The leaves kicked up, slapping their faces, and burning to a crisp with blasts of fire from their adversaries.

But it was too late.

A smaller, even younger girl took the older one’s place, reaching for the gold of the dragon egg. She collapsed in a deafening heap. Flames were burning about them, and it took all Kuzon’s energy to attempt to control the blaze. The bile rose in his throat.

Bumi lifted a fist and a boulder came crashing down on the head of the firebender who had been nearest the egg.

“Look out!” Kuzon bellowed, seeing the archer in the treetops. Another arrow landed at his feet and he swiped his sword to block another. With a _clang_ and a thrust, he hacked at the tree where the offender was, shaking her out of the branches. Behind him, the second firebender was swallowed whole into the earth, one last attempt at fire singeing past Kuzon’s leg.

He tried to chase after the archer, but she was too fast, and he could hear Bumi calling his name. He pivoted, letting himself follow the burning path up the trail.

The airbender that had shouted was openly crying now, tears sliding down her face in ugly rivulets, zigzagging down her pockmarked cheeks. She was kneeling next to the little girl who was panting for breath and clutching at her chest where an arrow had stuck itself right next to her heart, ripping through what was left of her orange and yellow clothing.

The tiny girl could not have been more than ten. She reached for the older girl, breath coming out in heaves, begging to be held one last time.

Bumi stood back, stricken in a way Kuzon had never seen. It was Kuzon who took the lead that time. He gathered little Maya into his arms, and a look of solemnity finally came upon her. She seized, spine arching grotesquely, and he remembered the poison on the arrows.

“She doesn’t have much time,” he said to the older airbender. “Say what you need to her.”

He asked himself when he had gotten so privy to the concept of loss. He was supposed to be a kid.

The teenaged airbender did not need any more prompting. She inched closer, knees touching the little girl’s arms. “One day,” she quaked as she clutched the egg to her middle, “We’ll return to the Western Air Temple and see Abbess Aya again…and we’ll play with the dragons that live nearby again…and everything will be okay…and we will be together there like we always said.” She gulped down her tears. “Like leaves in the wind,” she hiccupped. “Like leaves in the wind.”

Maya died in his arms with tears in her gray eyes and a broken gasp caught in her throat. All he could see was Aang’s face as he had remembered it, but slack and lifeless. He choked on a sob.

Bumi helped the girl up, and Lee took the egg in his arms.

“We’ll take this to the Order,” said Lee, expression hard. “They will know where to hide it.”

“We’ll take her to them too. She should hide in Gaoling. It’s safe there,” added Bumi.

The girl did not speak as they buried Maya. She did not say a word as she split off from them, following the soldier from Gaoling to her new home.

Kuzon watched as the sun began to set. The dead dragon had become a silhouette, and carrion birds began circling it from above. Bumi nudged his shoulder, his lopsided grin upturned in a painful smile. “They’ll be missing us, my friend,” he said. “We can find Aang later.”

When he looked back on that day, he wished that they could have had more time to search, because only a few hours later he saw the smoke of a fire over a ridge, headed straight for the valley to the north. Han Tui was in that direction and had fewer defensive walls than Omashu.

Over a week later, after sending reinforcements to Han Tui, they had found out that though the Earth Kingdom outnumbered the Fire Nation in the battle, Sozin had won. The drought fanned their flames and spread into the city as a wildfire. There were few survivors.

-

Kuzon was on his thirty-third summer when Sozin died in his sleep and his young heir and eldest son, Azulon, came to power. After twenty years, he felt a spark of hope. He shared his sentiments with Bumi who could not help but offer his snorting laughter in agreement.

 _Maybe this is it,_ thought Kuzon. _Maybe a change in command means a change in the tide of the war…or better yet, the end of the war!_

However, things changed during the Battle of Garsai.

While they had suffered many losses in the Western Earth Kingdom during the two decades the war had been fought, both the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes had held back the Fire Nation to the point where they had trouble reaching further into the continent.

Although the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes were on friendly terms before the war, after the genocide of the Air Nomads, there was an insurmountable rage that they both shared. A rage so deep and devouring that it kindled the struggle for justice that simmered just below the surface. The Fire Nation fought for domination, and the rest of the world fought for their own people. Yet, there was always that thread that tied them together, and the loss the Air Nomads who had been kind to them was the thread that had snapped. Even two decades in, it was a thought that many in the Order of the White Lotus and Kuzon’s comrades shared. But it was a thought that was quickly being forgotten as the Fire Nation took and took and took.

In Garsai, Kuzon fought by Bumi’s side at the orders of the Earth King. Bumi had arisen to mastery in his earthbending and was both feared and respected on the battlefield. He had a unique sense of thinking outside the box that followed him from childhood. His ability to sink into the earth and appear elsewhere was what gave him an edge. Kuzon had continued to stray from firebending, only allowing himself to utilize it in his most desperate hours. Instead, he became a weapons master, able to transition from a single edged sword to a spear in seconds.

Back-to-back they fought in those weeks in the outer rim of Garsai, the city looming behind them on the flats of the coastal Earth Kingdom. The waterbenders took advantage, dousing flames, and trapping navy ships.

But Azulon would not be deterred. He had ordered a new admiral to launch an attack whose cunning and strategy neither Kuzon nor Bumi could understand. The admiral’s forces ascended on them from the waters in a massive wave, even overwhelming the waterbenders. They came with new technology, bombing outposts and invading in tanks that they had never seen.

Kuzon looked up to the hull of one such ship, Lee at his side and clutching an arm, and saw the face of Anzu. She had a cracked, crooked smile on her face. She was older, but it was unmistakably her. She did not recognize him as her eyes scanned the crowd below, but he saw the way she was dressed and the many designations on her armor.

“That’s the admiral,” said Kuzon to Lee, a grim line on his face. “If we take her out, we might stand a chance.”

The Earth Kingdom’s armies were practically defeated, the dead littering the fields like mushrooms after a rainy day. But at this point, Kuzon spat on decorum. He spat on it even as nightfall came.

As one of the commanding officers, Bumi let them go on their terrible missionin in the middle of the night, allowing them only because there was not much else to lose.

“Take a waterbender with you,” he suggested, uncharacteristically serious. “It’s almost a full moon. You’ll have an advantage.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea, my prince?” asked Lee. He was fiddling with the bandage on his arm. “It is currently an armistice. Both armies have agreed to continue to fight in the morning. It will be without honor that we do this.”

Kuzon rounded on him, anger twisting his features. His clenched fists were smoldering. “They’ve pillaged the surrounding villages, killed civilians and children…taken the women for—for _comfort,”_ he hissed. He stopped for a moment, fuming. _“Comfort women._ Can you believe that? We don’t even know where they are. All we know is that those people are being taken advantage of, and who knows if any of them will come out of it alive.”

There was silence in Omashu’s commanding tent.

“And you’re telling me, Lee, that we would be doing this without honor?” he continued with a sneer. 

Quietly, Bumi added, “The admiral is your sister, Kuzon.”

“I don’t have a sister,” said Kuzon. The smoke retreated from his fingers, coiling into nothing.

After that, it was easy. They took a waterbender from the Southern Water Tribe who was one of the most trusted to take on the mission. With a master waterbender on their side, it was child’s play to sneak onto the command ship from the deep of the ocean in a bubble of air from the seafloor. The waterbender drowned the men on the deck before they spotted them. There was no one to sound the alarm.

Lee brought rock pebbles with him, skillfully knocking out any passerby. It was easy. Almost too easy.

Kuzon should have known that Anzu would be awake, should have known that she had grown more powerful than ever. She had all the talent in the family, while he had none. Her eyes had snapped open as soon as Kuzon stepped into the room, dagger at the ready.

She blasted flames that were too strong for him to redirect properly, and Lee screamed as his already injured arm was scorched into uselessness. The few awake soldiers came running into the suite, and the waterbender took them out easily around a writhing Lee. Kuzon wished more and more that Bumi allowed himself to come, but he was too important to the warfront and Kuzon would not risk losing him.

He faced Anzu, dagger sheathed and sword in hand.

“You’re a firebender,” she said nonchalantly. “A traitor.”

“You’re the traitor here,” he replied.

They lunged at each other in a flurry of fire and steel. She scratched at his face, he ducked and weaved. He had experience fighting firebenders in a way that most soldiers never had. He knew how they thought, knew how _he_ once thought.

In the end, it was the waterbender who managed to subdue her. The waning pulse of the moon aiding her, and the Fire Nation soldiers could not kill her. Anzu was trapped in chains of water that surrounded her fists and legs. She blew fire from her mouth, but Kuzon avoided it in the small space they were in.

“Kill me then, filthy traitor! You mud-lover! The Fire Nation will always prevail!” she screeched.

Kuzon ran, pointing his blade to her neck, brown eyes flashing. He thought that for an instant, there was recognition in her gaze, her lips open to the start of his own name. But that was all he had the satisfaction of seeing as he plunged the sword into her windpipe, her breath taken away in but a second of hesitation, and blood seeping from the gurgles of each agonizing gasp.

 _How fitting,_ he thought, _to take away the breath of someone who had taken the breath away from countless innocent others._

He remembered the night Anzu toasted to the slaughter of the Air Nomads of the temple she had raided, and he indulged in the sweet pleasure of the revenge he had taken for Aang.

The next day as the sun rose, the Earth Kingdom lost anyway, but they had seen it coming. Kuzon felt empty inside as he cleaned his sword and they retreated to the parts of the continent that were not Fire Nation occupied.

He also remembered what Gyatso had told him when Kuzon was little, just as he was about to steal a classmate’s pet as retribution for that same classmate injuring his pet bird. “Revenge is like a two-headed rat viper,” the old man had said, “While you watch your enemy go down, you're being poisoned yourself.”

Kuzon did not know what to think.

-

He was fifty-four summers when the Fire Nation doubled down on the Water Tribes.

He did not know how many summers it had been when Kuzon finally accepted that he might never find Aang, that maybe Aang was well and truly dead.

He had risen through the ranks of the White Lotus in the years since he and Bumi had discovered their existence. They had thrown themselves into an unspoken mission: to save as many Air Nomads as possible. If they would never be able to see Aang again, then at least, they could see to his people. However, Bumi was more distracted now as he had a city to look after. It was Kuzon that started to take on the brunt of their missions.

At every delivery of the white lotus tile, he jumped at the opportunity. At every Pai Sho table in an outpost he was familiar with as a base, he played the gambit. He must have delivered dozens of Air Nomads this way. Almost none of them had been masters, as their arrow tattoos must have kept those airbenders distinct and sought after. The one that he had saved died a few months later of old age according to an encrypted report.

It was with sinking realization that Kuzon knew that airbending was disappearing, and it would die if none of the masters survived.

The Fire Nation must have understood this too, because with the remaining Air Nomad population so miniscule that it was considered nonexistent, Azulon attacked the Southern and Northern Water Tribes with such ferocity that it crippled them to the point of separation.

Azulon sent out decrees to his fleets that the Order was able to intercept, stating that they were to search for the Avatar in the Water Tribes. The Air Nomad Avatar must have been dead if they had not shown themselves in the fifty-three years since Roku’s end.

He heard of Jeong Jeong, a Fire Nation military man through-and-through, who was quickly rising in the ranks because of his ruthlessness and prowess in the navy. The man was said to be young and an incredible talent, and the Earth Kingdom struggled to hold his armies back.

Kuzon had even faced him in battle once aboard a Fire Navy ship.

“I…I don’t want to kill you! I’ve killed enough!” the teenager had yelled at him when none of the more influential commanding officers were present. He had only spoken when Kuzon firebended the flames that were thrown at him away.

“If you don’t want to kill, then you shouldn’t have joined the military,” Kuzon had replied steadily. “If you don’t want to kill me because I was Fire Nation, fine. But that doesn’t change the fact that we’re on opposite sides. I will remove you if you’re in my way.”

He remembered that Jeong Jeong ran off, a burning mess behind him, and Kuzon was lucky to escape with his life.

In the midst of all the chaos and the loss, Kuzon sought Bumi for friendship and familiarity. They continued to play Pai Sho with each other, to strategize ways of maneuvering battalions across untouchable positions, to joke at things only they understood. Sometimes, Lee was there in the palace to deliver them missives. Other times, he would join in with Pai Sho. He could not fight anymore, having lost one of his arms, but he remained a friend.

It was the hope Kuzon had been looking for, and he looked for it elsewhere as well.

Occasionally, they continued to hear news from the White Lotus that did not involve Air Nomads nor the Fire Nation’s ruthless search for the Avatar. Aka and Juna had a firebending son years previously, and the same son had already married another firebender from a different house. Aka and Juna’s grandchild was called Piandao. Kuzon wished to meet him.

Then, when autumn drew near, the Order came calling again that year. There were fewer and fewer Air Nomad survivors to find. So few in fact, that there had not been a sighting in a handful of years. They had shifted focus to an ancient tradition that had not been upheld by the Order of the White Lotus in generations, and not since Avatar Kyoshi.

 _Find the Avatar,_ was what the tile had read when Kuzon received it. _Go to the north._

Kuzon closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He could see his childhood friend beckoning to chase him up a hill, waving from the back of Appa with a stupid smirk on his face. With this final nail, Kuzon had to accept that Aang was gone and that there was no hope for him.

He sank to the floor of his bedroom, clutching the tile in his hands and cried bitterly for all the lost years that the war had cost him. He cried for his heart and how he never let himself find love, for Bumi who married for political marriage but could not find happiness outside his ailing son, for the Air Nomads who they had saved but who had to live the rest of their lives tucked away and hidden all across the world simply to deny their heritage.

He cried most of all for the fact that the Avatar was the only thing giving him hope now. For that elusive person that would end the war once and for all, and for the terrible burden the world was about to give them. He cried because that was the only hope he had left.

-

When Kuzon approached the Northern Water Tribe, it was with the pretense of an envoy from the Earth Kingdom city of Omashu. He arrived on a ship with a scroll in hand, Earth Kingdom escorts behind him and Lee by his side. The autumn air was biting, but he did not let it dissuade him

They were greeted as warmly as they could be in the frigid north, amidst all the icebergs and snow.

The chief bowed to them and said, “Welcome, friends. What brings you here today?”

“We offer you supplies for your people,” said Kuzon. “You have suffered through many battles in the past few months.”

The chief looked at him with tired eyes and nodded. It was all they could do to not collectively sag. Kuzon could tell that was what the men in the room wanted to do, including the young master waterbender sitting at the chief’s right. He was a bit surprised to see someone who appeared to be in their early twenties at such a high seat of power.

“Pakku,” the chief stated to the waterbender in question, “Perhaps you would like to show our guests how we are training our men for battle. It may help the Earth Kingdom in strategizing should we fight alongside them again.”

“Yes, sir,” accepted Pakku.

Kuzon felt his bones crack under the weight of the chill of the weather. Though he remained an active participant in the war in his fifties, he was not as youthful as he used to be. He did not dare use his firebending to warm himself.

He followed Pakku out the doors and into the training field. Pakku demonstrated the rigorous training that each man endured, including the moves he taught them, shifting from stance to stance with practiced ease.

Kuzon tried to look for the Avatar in the boys and men that bended the water, but none of them seemed overly exceptional. He even tried to look for the Avatar in Pakku, but something told him that there was no way the Avatar spirit resided in him.

He stayed for days, but there was no sign, no indication, that anyone knew anything about an Avatar.

He, Pakku, and Lee gained a tentative understanding with each other that Kuzon found was positive. The three of them respected each other, and in the two weeks that Kuzon stayed to help with strategy and supply as a form of goodwill from the Earth Kingdom, he could consider the young man a friend.

He noticed many maidens trying to flirt with Pakku, smiling at him and winking, flipping their braids, and blushing. Apparently, he was an eligible bachelor and a popular one at that.

“Why not pick one of them?” asked Kuzon one day. “You are past marriageable age in your tribe. I’m sure if you made a betrothal necklace…”

“I won’t do it,” whispered Pakku. “Not again. Not after…” He gulped, turning away, and leaning on the icy rails that overlooked the docks. They were packing to return.

Kuzon furrowed his brow. “Again?” he asked. “Did you have someone you were betrothed to?”

Pakku glanced away. At first, he was hesitant to reply. He crossed his arms and slipped his gloved hands into his parka sleeves. His long dark hair and ponytail swished with the ocean breeze. He exhaled, finally looking at Kuzon. “Not just someone,” he said. “I loved her…but she ran away to the Southern Water Tribe. She left a note saying she couldn’t marry me, that it wasn’t what she wanted.”

Kuzon frowned as she saw the younger man, not saying anything.

“I just…I want to understand why she left,” remarked Pakku, words quiet. “What could she see in the world out there that I couldn’t? I’m a waterbending master, but I don’t understand. Is there something I don’t know? Is there a philosophy I can learn? A truth? Whatever is out there, I want to know it.”

Kuzon could see the thirst of knowledge in his eyes, the hardness that settled on Pakku’s shoulders when there must not have been any before. He saw in Pakku what he saw in himself, and in Bumi, and in Lee.

Before he left the Northern Water Tribe for the next leg of his mission, he left a white lotus tile in Pakku’s quarters. _For your worldly endeavors,_ he wrote.

-

His mission from the Order was to help them find the Avatar, and through the winter solstice, that was exactly what he did. He left Lee behind to return to Bumi in Omashu. He was the only one of them that could fight alone. Bumi was king, and Lee would be the best to support him. Neither were the best to leave.

He scoured the homes in the Southern Water Tribe, asking elders if there were newborns with strange energies. He searched through the icy homes, the chieftain’s headquarters, the hunting tents. He stayed in the south even longer than in the north, into the dead of winter.

In some ways, the Southern Water Tribe had harsher weather than the Northern Water Tribe. The tundra was dry, the cold seeped into the marrow of his bones and past his overcoat and furs. Not even his meager firebending helped through the snowstorms and the blizzards.

Even during all that, the Fire Nation was more relentless here than they were in the north. He supposed that it was because of the tides that it was easier for them to sail south, but it could also have been the proximity to the mainland that made assailing them less of a task.

There were occasional raids, and most were not too crippling. Many were fended off by the waterbenders. Nets were cut and slashed, and Kuzon could help them. Still, he did not firebend in front of them. He became an asset to them, and by springtime when it was the prime season for the Fire Nation to ramp up their attacks, he became a strategic force to be reckoned with.

He sent letters to Bumi often, updating him in cryptic tones through cyphers that the Order that taught them both.

In a reply back Bumi said:

_The Order believes that the airbenders will come back. They say they have scholars looking for ways to return them, even if it takes over one hundred years. There is a man studying Guru Laghima’s teachings from the Air Nomads, and his studies are gaining a following. They say that around two hundred years from now there will be a change in the world, but no one knows what it means. I think that if we have hidden enough of the survivors around the world, maybe their ancestors will be the new Air Nomads. Sounds tricky, tricky, right?_

Kuzon smiled at the word choice of his friend, and he felt that small flicker of hope once again.

He tried to feel that hope as the Southern Raiders from the Fire Nation bombarded the south with a startling savagery, as if they believed the Avatar to be among them. They began to steal waterbenders, and Kuzon could not expect to help stop it all. The capital city in the south had already splintered into too many facets that could no longer be fully put back together. He was injured in another raid, a knife slicing down his right eye until he lost sight. He had to patch it together, but to no avail.

He decided on his own that he would sneak on a ship in the uniform of a downed Fire Nation soldier to see their angle, to somehow capture the tactics they had used, and the intelligence they thought they had on the Avatar. When he gathered the information he needed, he would give it to the Earth Kingdom and to the Water Tribes. He would finally return to Omashu, even without the identity of the Avatar.

It was simple to blend in as a soldier of the people that were once his. For a while, there were no problems with his disguise, but he did not count on a woman recognizing his uniform, nor that each uniform was labeled uniquely in the Southern Raiders.

“That’s Moku’s,” she spat, disgusted. “And I know for a fact that he’s dead.” She looked him in the face through his helmet, golden eyes seething. “An intruder!” she bellowed, and the ship was alive with soldiers.

Kuzon ran for his life, through the metal hallways, and around dividers and pillars. There were too many of them and all he had was his sword. He cut away as many as he could, but they were almost all firebenders. He was a weak firebender. He knew this. He _knew this._ And yet.

He threw a punch into the gut of someone, fist burning and ripping through clothes. He clenched his jaw, inhaling the freezing gales on the deck and shoving the familiar vomit down his throat. He burst forth in flames, and his whole body shuddered because he hated it more than anything.

He saw Aang, and Gyatso, and Ta Lee, and Juna, and Maya. He saw all their faces flashing before him like the pages of an endless story that he could not ever finish. All of them were blank and pale, lifeless and limp, a blaze consuming them in a maelstrom of heat and aggression until they disappeared into the ashes of the cremated dead.

A knife was thrust into his stomach, hilt deep, just in his blind spot. His patched eye could not catch it. Kuzon only had a second to look at it before he fell backward from the starboard side of the ship, the waves covering him in a cold curtain.

Tendrils of red floated past him, and a strange numbing sensation dribbled into his limbs and bled into his veins.

 _Poison,_ he pondered in his head.

He could feel his lips turning blue, the water clogging his desperate lungs, the warmth sapping from his body. The shadow of the hull passed above him until the rays of the dimming sun broke through the currents, spattering his listless arms in spots of daylight as they rose above his head.

Below him on the ocean floor was a glowing light, beating in tandem with the flow of the sea. It was a bright white edged in a diaphanous cerulean, centered on one spherical orb underneath the surface of the water. It was an iceberg frozen over, and inside was a shape of a boy and a hovering beast above him. Kuzon could make out the lines of arrow tattoos.

He had to be dreaming, because he knew those tattoos, and that boy. He had seen that face in his dreams and his nightmares for decades as the war thundered onward. It did not matter that the same face he saw now was the face of a being with too much power from a spirit longtime vanished.

“I’m really happy we’re friends,” Kuzon mouthed into the water. They were some of the last words he had ever heard Aang say.

He imagined what his life could have been like had he had the energy to save himself. He could almost see little Piandao meeting him on the steps of some mansion, saving the conflicted Jeong Jeong from a life he so obviously did not want, seeing Pakku find the meaning behind his mistakes. There was a part of him that must have been jealous that Bumi probably would be able to see it all, and that Lee would be there to help him.

He hoped that all the Air Nomads he had saved with Bumi were not saved in vain. He wanted to tell Aang all these things as he sunk to the bottom, but there was nothing to say. He had no fire left in him; he had not had any in a long time.

Kuzon received no response from the shimmering frozen mass in front of him. The poison coursed through his body, ebbing and throbbing like the golden liquid he imagined rat viper venom to be. And he stared, wide-eyed, into the face of the lost Avatar suspended in time, missing forever until he had found him. Aang, his lost friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that, my friends, is the end of this monster. What started out as my need to explore Kuzon as a character and the White Lotus as a sort of other force, became a huge thing (at least for me). While the road was rocky, we have made it this far together.
> 
> Yes, this is part of the Legacy series. There is one shorter sequel that will be two parts that will focus on Bumi and the (far into the future) effects of the Order of the White Lotus saving Air Nomads.
> 
> Anyway, thank you for reading this! Please leave some love below if you enjoyed it!
> 
> Side note: I have started to notice that some people have been recommending my stuff on Tumblr! That's crazy amazing and I never thought that would happen! If you do so, feel free to tag my Tumblr account at itsmoonpeaches.


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